Wake Up Your Saints
by compartmental
Summary: Haymitch Abernathy is alive. He feels fine. / or, Haymitch and coming home. ―for Nina and Caesar's Palace's Valentine's Exchange.


_i won't follow you into the rabbit hole  
i said i would, but then i saw  
your shivered bones__  
they didn't want me too  
_

― "terrible love (alternate version)" by the national

* * *

The first day after coming home, Haymitch Abernathy feels fine. The sun rises and the sun sets and he's okay. He goes to the market with his mother, sees his best friend, and finds his way to the meadow.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

There are things he's never going to forget, of course. He's never going to forget seeing his intestines _outside of his body_; nope, that's going to stay with him. He'll never forget the shrieking of birds, the tearing of flesh. He'll never not have a darkness closing around his heart, trying to drag him back into its depths.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming. There's always a thin sheen of sweat covering his body, making his shirt stick to his chest. He does a quick inventory: ten fingers, ten toes, still got legs, all that. His hands go to his stomach, searching for the rough emergency surgery scar that the doctors who brought him back from the brink left.

It's not there. There's nothing scarring his olive skin, not even the memories of the injuries from before the arena. It's like he's never even lived.

It takes Haymitch a minute to process it, to remember: he was in the Hunger Games, the 50th Hunger Games. He was in the Quarter Quell. Haymitch tries to remember the other 47 tributes, the 47 that died so he could emerge from the arena as an (unconscious) Victor, but he can't recall all the details. He can only remember it all for one.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

There's a recurring nightmare he has, but he can't even call it that. It's a _memory_. Haymitch _remembers_ being held down by the District 2 male, Augustus_, _the feel of the cool, sharp blade against his neck. He _remembers _the sting of it as it penetrated his skin and the warmth of the drops of blood the trickled toward his ear.

He wishes it were a nightmare.

It's all a vivid picture, too; he remembers the green of the grass blades, the azure of the sky, the chirping of the birds. He remembers the pitch black his eyelids reflected when he squeezed them shut, resigned to dying, to his mother seeing his corpse in a snow-white casket.

He remembers the sound the Augustus made; the shocked sound that escaped his lips, the way Augustus' body just _fell_, the knife barely nicking Haymitch's throat as the other tribute lost his grip.

He remembers opening his eyes, seeing the shade of blue he never thought he would again, and the snide tone in her voice as she extended her hand and said, _Are you just going to lay there all day, sweetheart?_

He always wakes up before he can touch her again, and he's sweating, and he just wants to forget.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

He goes to his family's graves once, sees his mother's name beside his father's weather-worn headstone, his brother's tiny grave.

He doesn't go back. Instead, he goes to the market (alone, he's never been so alone before; he wakes up alone, he eats alone, he sleeps alone) and finds the tiny, grimy store in the corner whose existence everyone likes to ignore. The door's glass has a thick layer of dust covering it and the inside of the store is equally dark. The man at the counter is missing teeth when he smiles.

Haymitch hands over the money (it figures he has a lot of it now, when he has no one to share it with) and the guy hands him the bottle of clear liquid. It feels like he's selling his soul.

He goes home and swallows some, thinks of all the metaphors he could make; it burns his throat the entire way. He downs half the bottle before he's throwing up everywhere, and he still remembers.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

He doesn't know why he does it, will never be able to explain _why_, but for some reason, he enters the sweet shoppe. She's at the counter, talking to the mayor-elect. He thinks back to what his mother told him in the first few days he was back, the information overload in the form of his missing few weeks' gossip. He hears her voice telling her that "poor Maysilee's sister" got engaged to the favored mayoral candidate.

The way they're standing, close to each other and leaning in, makes Haymitch think they're a good couple.

Then she sees him.

Her eyes go wide, then her face shuts down. Her betrothed, Wes Undersee, turns around and sees him, nods in his direction. _I've got to sign some papers,_ he tells her, kissing her cheek. She just nods and watches him walk out the polished glass door.

That's when Haymitch sees her in full for the first time. He tastes acid at the back of his throat and runs out the door, vomits in the bushes, and walks back in with an apology on his lips. She says she understands, that he was the last person to see his sister breathing. He says the honor was wasted on him.

_You look so much like her_, he says, then remembers they were identical twins. She doesn't point it out.

She closes the shop and they sit and talk for hours. He tells her that Maysilee didn't want her to mourn every time she looked in the mirror. Maison lets out a dry sob, covering her mouth with her hand. _Thank you for not letting her die alone_, she says. He nods, once, and she hugs him.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

He sees a lot of her, after that. He doesn't have a family to haunt, and her parents keep forgetting that they stopped having two daughters, keep seeing her and calling out_ Maysilee._

(When they remember, they blame him. He doesn't disagree.)

Maison convinces him to move out of his family home and into the Victor's Village, her winning argument being, _Your family is fucking dead, and if you keep living in that house, you're going to kill yourself._

So, he packs a few boxes and carries them to the village himself. The new house is shiny and clean, if not a little dusty from disuse. He's had the key since the day he came home, his mom thinking of all the food she can fit into a Victor's pantry. He doesn't buy groceries. It may be his house, but it'll never be his home.

Wes and Maison visit him on the first night. Wes cooks from his mother's recipe, uses six different spices. Haymitch eats it and tries to remember the familiar bland taste of his mother's cooking.

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He feels fine.

* * *

He kisses her, once; an accident. Except, he doesn't know if it's an accident if it's because he's drunk. He remembers (memories are almost all he has, these days) Maysilee in the elevator back from the interviews, confessing her childhood crush on him.

_And I'd always hoped I'd get the chance to tell you, _she'd said. Then, she'd thrown her head back and laughed. _I mean, I technically just told you, but there's not a damn thing we can do about it now._

He'd strode the four feet toward her, placed his hand on the back of her neck, and kissed her. When she pulled back, she'd been crying, and she'd said, _I thought I loved you, once._

Maison doesn't pull back, though, doesn't let him pull back. She pushes him down on the carpet, says, _You were the last person to see my sister alive,_ knots her fingers in his hair, _that was always supposed to be me._

She shows up to his house for dinner that night, Wes trailing behind, the stress of being mayor leaving its marks with the lines on his face. He smiles when he sees Haymitch, though, and hugs him. Haymitch wonders if Wes knows anything about betrayal, and doesn't know if he should feel relieved or guiltier, but ―

Haymitch Abernathy is alive.

He's not fine.

* * *

**notes: **WOW I'M THE WORST, OKAY. This is a _really _late fic for Nina for Caesar's Palace's Valentine's Fic Exchange. Really late. Thanks to Estoma for editing. Please review. Title from "Wake Up Your Saints" by The National.


End file.
